A Swedish web-site monitoring company has published a worldwide map of Google's data centers. And people love looking at it.
Today, as reported by just about every tech-happy news source on the web, the official Pingdom blog got all graphical with a new Google Data Center FAQ from Data Center Knowledge. Pingdom's Map of All …

COMMENTS

Quite logical

Africa is in the way of being the new MSLand (thanks to extensive briber^H financial help for developpment -Mandriva story anyone?), so no Google allowed. Kangaroos and wombats don't need Google, they just go to NZ when they want to have some fun (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/28/wombat_incident/). As for Wyoming (and the surrounding area), well... do they even have computers there?

Fortitude

GOOG has the b*ll*x to string new fibre across the Pacific. Perhaps they have the willpower to drop kick multiple DC-in-a-box into covertly connected places as well? (Calling Dr. "Indie" Jones!) It's not simply a patent eh?

Re: Oz, Horace Greenly said it best: Go west, young man (but send your money - and market goods - east). GOOG, may you enjoy your mirth on Earth for the worth of your perch down under. But next, mebbe try one without being flagged?

Per usual, amanfromMars must be the defining authority in this matter. Bless.

Nah... they only invented Google maps

Transcontinental network links?

I'm guessing that they would need to put datacenters in areas with really good, really high capacity network links. What does that map look like compared to where they've put their centres (China and other such countries not included of course, as they have to put datacenters locally in those jurisdictions in order to be able to comply with local censorship requirements.)

No data center in Australia due to legal risk

Australia .. the backwards country

We don't need your fancy high speed networks down here. We're still on a high about cable TV and being able to phone people from outside cities. We're a bit slow down here. Deep in our main telephone cable carriers document is their guarentee to supply 2400kbits over a phone line. Woo baby! Google could put a high speed data centre down here and everbody would have to queue up over the single copper cable connecting it to the rest of the world.

They could do a solar powered data centre

Why Australia?

Answer: There's nothing here.

Seriously. 20-something million people makes us as big as, what, 1/3rd of London?

Of those 20-million-or-so, about 9 of them can get a decent broadband connection, thanks to the head-in-the-sand antiquated so-called 'telecommunications network' we have here. Seriously, after having our business offline for the past 8 days due to the local ADSL exchange being 'dead' (nah, mate, the East Sydney CBD Exchange, not that important, mate) and going through the hoop-jumping ritual that is moving flats, I am quite prepared to say that Google would be better off putting a DC on the Dark Side Of The Planet Coosbane than in Australia.

Unless, of course, it complies with RFC1149 which is FULLY SUPPORTED by the Australian Government!

bandwidth issues...

Rob Pike gave an impromptu presentation at AUUG 2 years ago (when one of the scheduled speakers became unavailable) on building a Google Datacentre which touched on a lot of the Google way of doing things. One of things he noted was that there's a fair bit of management around controlling bandwidth use as a new DC is being synched up to the rest of the Google cloud and that they go to fair lengths to manage the bandwidth use and cap it so as not to screw up the rest of the DC's operation as it comes up to speed.

Now recall that's all in an environment of high speed fibre backbones in the US of 100's if not 1000's of Gb/s. Now contrast with Oz which sits at the end of a bunch of shared ocean cables. Each cable is what 3-5Gb/s as I understand things? And there are what 10, 20 maybe 30 of them feeding in here from various directions. I suspect there simply isn't the bandwidth to keep a Google DC running here.

But they do have the Sydney office from which Google Maps was born. And (like most other places I suspect) they recruit fairly vigorously here for both local people and people to relocate to the US.

@ Adrian Esdaile

"Seriously. 20-something million people makes us as big as, what, 1/3rd of London?"

No, it makes you 3 times the size of London. About a third of the size of the UK

Whilst that cesspool on the Thames seems big (particularly if you live in a village of 560), it's only just over a tenth of the population of the UK. Which is why people that live outside of the M25 get a tad miffed at the many comments from those inside that seem to indicate that nothing exists north of Watford or west of Reading.

@Tony

@ David

Good comment

But unfortunately, thanks to government policy and the various inept departments, there is damn all agriculture. But then, the height of culture now is the return to Eastenders of Bianca, and Rickaaaay